Liam Friend admitted too many players experienced off-days in Margate's home defeat to Burgess Hill on Saturday.

The Blues raced into an early two-goal lead at Hartsdown but failed to capitalise, allowing the visitors to snatch a 3-2 win courtesy of Andre McCollin's 87th minute volley.

The victory was only Hill's second of the Bostik Premier season and Gate skipper Friend admitted the home side simply did not do themselves justice.

The Gate skipper said: "Even though we got the two goals I don't think we were playing particularly well.

"We felt we could maybe build on it but we didn't, we actually went backwards. We were poor, sometimes you can be poor and get away with it but we didn't get away with it today.

"We know we weren't good enough and we need to make sure we're better next week.

"If you've got a team of 11 players you need six or seven to be seven out of 10, we just didn't have that today."

Friend felt the Gate might still have earned a draw, but he did concede they showed a vulnerability to set pieces.

He added: "I think we may be gave it to them a little. I think all their goals came from set pieces, the first one (scored by Pat Harding) is second phase from a set piece when there appeared to be quite a lot of free men in our box which is never a good thing.

"The free-kick (from Tom Cadman) was well struck but it's still a set piece which we feel we should have done a little bit better with and the third one was again a second ball from a set piece.

"Maybe someone could have headed it clear, or the goalkeeper can punch it clear and we also needed to be in front of the bloke coming in from the edge of the box to score. It was bitterly disappointing for us and we need to make sure we turn our form around."